The Heartless Boy
by Beabaseball
Summary: Instead of falling into Traverse Town, Sora follows Riku into the wave. Sora follows Riku to Maleficent. Re-attempt/Continuation of "Thus Always" on here and ao3
1. Chapter 1

**continuation of the 'thus always' au story thing, tho not necessary to read. it'll provide more detail if you want. FFnet url + "/s/11388746/1/Thus-Always"**

They can't find him.

The keybearer.

There's only so long they can stay in Traverse Town, watching the stars blink out, before Donald and Goofy accept there's more harm than good in staying.

The keybearer won't be swallowed by darkness: no one with the heart to summon the legendary keyblade would be swallowed by the foolish darkness within a heart… but there are worlds disappearing, and princesses to protect.

If the keybearer arrives in Traverse Town, Leon's gang will contact them.

Until then, they're just going to have to go looking instead.

–

…Sora can't tell if it's day or night. After one day in the dark castle with Riku, time has lost all meaning. So the heartless are his alarm clock. They scratch at the door in the 'morning,' with little sharp claws that leave deep gashes in the wood, and which Sora thought would probably be bad.

So at first he apologized about as fast as he could, once he got over the shock of how _tall_ Maleficent was—( _she had green skin. She was from another world. DID THAT MAKE HER AN ALIEN?_ )—and said he'd fix the door, even though he had _no_ idea how to.

Maleficent laughed (he was pretty sure it was a laugh) and waved her septre over the door, and all the scratches vanished right in front of them.

Then, she did the same thing over the gashes in his stomach.

Both Sora and Riku were patting up and down his sides for a good five minutes, eyes wide and mouths gaping.

The little heartless guys haven't scratched him since. She says it was probably an accident. They get a little over-excited sometimes, she says. Smiles. The heartless guys are still kinda hovering at the edges of the halls, and they scurry a little when she does.

Riku ignores them, smacks Sora on the back, and says they know what that's like.

Sora whines and says, "what d'you mean by _that!_ " but he knows exactly what Riku means, and his heart swells a little, because even if Kairi's missing, he's still got his best friend.

The heartless around them chitter a little more loudly.

Probably they're embarrassed?

It's kinda cute.

No joke. They _are_ kinda cute once he gets used to them. But he doesn't _call_ them cute, because he's kinda assumed they're all male (because girls would have little bows on them and wear pink, right?), so he only calls them 'cool' out loud, instead of 'cute,' so it's not embarrassing. He's always gotten embarrassed when Kairi called him cute or his mom ruffled his hair, and he wouldn't want to do the same to them.

(…he misses his mom. He misses her calling him down to dinner and tucking him into bed when he was little, even though she hasn't done that in years, now.)

(…he wonders if it's bad that he thinks about Kairi more.)

(He doesn't even know when bedtime _is_ anymore.)

–

…

Time doesn't have any meaning anymore, so in a way, it feels like it's been forever since they stumbled into Maleficent's castle. It probably hasn't been _that_ long.

…still feels like it.

Feels like it's been months since they've seen Kairi, or been home, or seen the beach or the sun.

Maleficent tries to help. She makes them an artificial sun to put up in their room up in the tower. It's a big, floating, glowing ball of literal fire, though?

Sora is pretty sure Maleficent has never seen the sun.

He says 'it's perfect' anyway, and just… tries to make the best of it. She tried. That means a lot, honestly, that someone's trying to make him feel a little more at home.

And, to be fair—as he points out to Riku—no one's ever made him a fake sun before!

Riku responds by casting a fire spell and lights Sora's hair on fire.

–

….

The fire spell thing was just a joke.

…it was still a fire spell.

–

That's the thing, okay.

See.

Sora's no good at magic.

Sora's no good at swordfighting anymore, either.

Not since Riku got his keyblade.

Which! Is really cool for Riku and all. But.

But..

…

No, it's really, really cool. It's beyond cool. It's _awesome_. It's freaking magical. Totally out of a fantasy book or something. It's exactly what they need to save Kairi, according to Maleficent. If they can find her body, then Riku can use his keyblade to wake her up and help the other girls who've been falling into these comas.

(Sora never wanted to be part of a fantasy story)

So that's why Maleficent's been asking Riku to go out to other worlds and find these girls if he can. The heartless are helping, as much as little shadow dudes can help. They're not very smart—Sora can't even get the ones that are about his size to do anything with him except sit in the corner and twitch. Which is. Admittedly pretty creepy!—so it makes sense that Riku needs to be there to help out in other worlds and make sure they really do find the real Kairi. Because Riku is smart, and strong, and has a cool sword, and can do magic.

(Sora wanted to be a _traveler._ Just. A nice tourist, or something)

So it makes sense that Riku goes out, and Sora stays here, where it's safe, and he won't accidentally have his sides ripped open anymore by weird floating tunnels of darkness. They don't know what's out there in those other worlds, and Riku's got a good weapon and knows how to use it, so it makes sense that it's Riku who goes out, while Sora stays here, and stares at the stone ceiling, and listens to the heartless claw at the door outside.

They don't even have TV here.

Sora doesn't even _like_ TV, but it's what everyone back on the islands did when they didn't want to be outside.

And there's… not much outside for him to go to here.

…

He explores it anyway, while Riku's gone. Until he knows all the nooks and crannies, and has figured out how to climb from one floating rock to another, and has seen all the different colored fish in the tideless tide-pools, and felt the chill of a sunless day sit damp and sticky on his skin.

He never thought he'd grow tired of a upwards-flowing waterfall.

He has been proven wrong before.

Not even bringing along one of the little heartless helps.

They don't really act like dogs. They don't investigate anything. They aren't like people and don't seem to really care about where they're going.

They're not even disinterested.

They just.. kinda go.

…

Sora doesn't like to be disrespectful to animal(?)s' natures, but… the heartless are…. Really boring, other than their looks.

They all look about the same. A flying one with wings is always gonna have the same wings and the same goggles and the same clawed feet. A lil belly crawler is always gonna only ever crawl on its belly. None of them have any distinguishing features or personality, and Sora knows, because one time he spent _all day_ with one specific little ant-person heartless, and five minutes into the castle he blinked at the wrong moment. When he opened his eyes, there was another little shadowy dude standing beside _his_ shadowy dude, and for the life of him, Sora and couldn't tell the difference.

…

There's probably nothing more lonely than spending a whole day with someone, just to never recognize them again the minute you take your eyes away, he decided.

…

(He never wanted to be a part of a fantasy story. He wanted to _explore_. On a raft. With his _friends_. What if Riku finds something better out there and decides not to come back?)

…

Sora goes down the steps from his room one day, but doesn't leave the castle.

It takes him half an hour to figure out the teleporter system in the castle, and he's just about ready to scream in frustration and just _shout_ for Maleficent before he finally finds her, hidden away in a gloomy little room with a cauldron and a crystal ball.

For a minute, he almost wants to ask questions about that, and then he decides he should probably ask his other question first, because he really doesn't want to forget about it and have to walk all the way back here again.

"Yes?" Maleficent says, looking up only once from her cauldron.

"Uh," Sora says, because for all the time he spent coming here, he still didn't figure out how to phrase what he wanted to ask. "Can you give me something to help me fight?"


	2. Chapter 2

When they first encounter the heartless, they don't think much of it at all. They have more important things on their mind.

Like being swallowed by a giant whale!

That was very important to think about. As in, thinking about how complete terrible it was. It being a really, really terrible thing was one of the very few things Donald and Goofy could agree on.

They'd tried to fly the gummi ship out again at first, but it was no good. Even if they managed to catch a moment when the monster had its mouth open, it would simply swallow them up again, apparently angry that a meal had escaped.

The last try had almost split their ship in half.

…

So they weren't really sure what to do. They couldn't contact their King, they hadn't found the Key, they couldn't even tell the castle what had gone wrong…

Would Daisy know what happened to Donald? Or would he just vanish?

Donald screamed until that thought vanished instead. It was very therapeutic. Stupid thought.

Well. He was also screaming because he was frustrated and didn't want to die inside a fucking whale. But that wasn't important.

…At the very least, they got used to the stench pretty quickly. Getting up close and personal with a whale's dental hygiene seemed to be the fastest way to make you lose your sense of smell.

There were old rotten ships and puddles of deep water the color of dead algae, and floating boards recently ripped from bows. They could only assume there was also some rotten food (or rotten people!) inside some of the ships, too, adding to the smell.

They explored the rancid mouth for what felt like a long time, trying hard to not spend too long in the water. The color clung, which was not a particularly good sign. They found a few treasure chests—definite highlight of their impending doom, so far!—and talked to the only other living person they found. An old guy on a boat.

They started with the extremely obvious question of how he ended up inside a whale mouth with his son, a kitten, and a very expressive goldfish.

—like, normally, Goofy and Donald would have probably just assumed the guy lived inside a whale mouth all the time, (different strokes for different worlds and all that) but he seemed kinda upset about it. And also. The assumption some of the smell probably came from creatures that hadn't found their way to being heartless—

—and then his son ran off into the innards of the whale, which was just terrible judgement on the kids' part.

And Jiminy was _beside_ himself, and Goofy was looking pretty upset too, and honestly, Donald would've probably been sort of upset if his nephews ran off into a whale stomach too, he guessed.

(Past the mouth and down the throat, look out stomach, here we go)

That was when they saw the thing.

At first, Donald had mistaken it for a particularly strong heartless. It was all black and pointed. A little bigger than Donald, a little smaller than Goofy, with claws for fingers and two beady yellow eyes.

So it made sense that they mistook it for a heartless at first. After all, what _else_ could it have been?

But it didn't move like a heartless. It didn't _think_ like a heartless. And cheese and crackers, that was _not_ a sentence Donald ever thought he'd think, because heartless _didn't_ think. Heartless were just overwhelming emotions within a heart—need and greed and desperation—their restraints unlocked and allowed to consume anything in their path. The only thing holding them in line was whoever was summoning them.

(The white-haired human.)

That was it, though.

This thing, whatever it was?

It _thought_.

It didn't sway mindlessly, but it watched with a certain curiosity.

It paused to swing around on half-dissolved masts and bounce off the walls in what almost looked like play.

It gave the white-haired summoner a high-five as they sent Donald and Goofy skidding into stomach acid, their skin burning as they hollered.

It cradled the little puppet boy carefully in its arms when it kidnapped him. Not slung over a shoulder or dangling by one limb, but cradled against its chest, like a precious doll.

And before it climbed into the portal, it turned to look at them, just pulled out of the stomach acid, their bodies still blistering as Donald failed to shout for 'cure,' too busy wanting to hurtle a _fireball_ at its face—

It turned, before it climbed into the portal.

And it waved.

And that was the most horrifying thing of all.


End file.
